Chromatics – Kill For Love (Drumless Version)

I have a full time job that doesn’t involve music blogging and it’s impossible for me to keep up with every new musician, band, DJ, or sound. I’m perfectly okay with that so you’ll have to excuse me for sharing something from the Gorilla vs. Bear blog that might be old news.

The Chromatics are a synth-pop quartet from Portland, Oregon that originally started out as a lo-fi punk band. According to Wikipedia their line-up has changed dramatically and they’re now more electronic than punk. Their debut full length, Kill For Love, was released in March of 2012. If you want to hear some of the original work check out the Youtube video below.

The drumless version that they’re giving away rides the lines between downtempo and ambient music. The vocals are haunting and the synth and guitar stabs add a real dreamy quality to the music.

“It’s 11 tracks, because some of the tracks don’t have drums to begin with. It’s all the pop songs without drums… I think people will have a lot of fun with it because everyone keeps remixing ‘Birds of Paradise’ because there were no drums on it… I also mastered an instrumental version of the entire album. I always master multiple versions in case I want to collage or edit them later. I was really liking the way the vocal mixes sounded with no drums and I think that the drums on the album are so heavy, that it’s interesting to hear the record as this almost-empty, almost-a cappella kind of thing.”